58967 - Optimization of a High Pressure Industrial Fan 

Many industrial processes require the use of fans, from refinery to power generation and from petrochemistry to pollution control. For these industries, a fan that can provide reliable performances in sometimes extreme conditions can be mission-critical.

The design of such fans have historically relied on turbomachinery affinity laws, resulting in oversized machines that are expensive to manufacture and transport.

With the increasingly lower CPU cost of fluid modeling, designers can now turn to CFD optimization to produce the necessary machine performance and flow conditions while respecting manufacturing constraints.

The objective of this study is to maximize the pressure rise across an industrial blower while respecting manufacturing constraints, therefore achieving a more efficient fan design.

First, a 3D scan of the baseline centrifugal impeller geometry is used to create the CFD model, which is validated against experimental data. The impeller baseline geometry is then parameterized with 21 free parameters driving the shape of the impeller hub, shroud, blade lean and blade camber.

A fully automated optimization process is conducted using Numeca’s Fine/Design3D software, allowing for a CPU-efficient Design Of Experiment (DOE) database generation and a surrogate model using the powerful Minamo optimization kernel and data-mining tool.

The optimized impeller geometry coupled with a CFD-aided redesigned volute shows an increase in overall pressure rise over the whole performance line, up to 24% at higher mass flow rates compared to the baseline geometry.